Tag Archive: MBA

CAT – Common Admission Test for most premier MBA colleges in India has evolved from an unknown exam to the only exam most students are getting coached for. CAT is the most talked about exam among final year students in India. It promises a cozy job and other great career prospects. If you pass through the exam, you will see a white cat and if couldn’t get through you would say I saw the black cat, most Indians believe in this!

Where is all this leading to? You must be thinking we know enough about CAT by now. It has sections like quant, verbal, data interpretation, logical reasoning and so on. Geeks who are good at maths, verbal and reasoning will reach the next round of selection affairs. Most of all, to make our lives miserable and difficult they also have this amazing feature called “NEGATIVE MARKING”. Hey and there is more to it, CAT exam organizers realized in 2009 that students have got tech savvy and hence they introduced a computer integrated exam. How easy can it get to crack CAT?!!!??

Most of us feel like this. But, some of us feel like this….

Let me dissect CAT and understand it.

You won’t find any thing organic after dissecting this type of CAT. All you will find is YOUR ATTITUDE and YOUR INNER SELF. You must be thinking why did this take the turn of philosophy. From now on, this can be titled as “CAT PHILOSOPHY”.

What exactly happens if you accomplish to pass through all three rounds of the b-schools. You sit in the classrooms of the most premier institutes in India for two long years. Work your ass offff and realize that you will be placed in a comfortable job. Most of them for who this happens, are treated as a different ilk. How can these few people make it happen? It is their attitude of confronting and solving problems. People like this, just love problems. They don’t run away from problems, they don’t procrastinate to solve problems. They just do it.

Further dissection and diagnosis

Why are these guys paid so much? Do they have such extraordinary skills that I don’t have? The answer is no. You may have skills better than the guys who graduate out of premier b-schools, but not have the right attitude. This attitude is what the b-schools and companies look for while recruiting them.

QUANT: This section is all about math. You definitely will need to have a decent understanding about numbers and math. The word ‘DECENT’ can be defined as mastering your 10th grade and 11th grade math chapters. Then comes application. So what you have to practice is not when you start preparing for CAT. What you have to start with is, application of these mastered math concepts and hence show your ability to solve problems.

VERBAL: If you know good literature, grammar and English then you will get through this section. Wrong again.

Test yourself. How well can you communicate or present your thoughts with simple English and with good grammar. Can you comprehend, interpret and analyze a passage in few minutes. If you can then you can crack this section.

DI & DS: With limited data can you draw inferences and understand what the problem is? This is a mindset we have to develop as a prelude to solving Math.

Smart coaching centers advise students to get a feel of this section before any other section.

LOGICAL REASONING: The phrase speaks for itself. You think you have common sense then apply it. If you don’t have it, then develop it, to bypass this section.

An ASSOCHAM paper on “B-schools and engineering colleges shut down – big business struggles” reveals that only 10 per cent of business graduates are actually employable, despite the robust demand for MBAs. Only 10 per cent of graduates from Indian business schools, excluding those from the top 20 schools, get a job straight after completing their course, compared with 54 per cent in 2008.

According to the paper, since 2009, campus recruitments have gone down by 40 per cent. As a result of not being able to attract enough students, over 180 B-schools have already closed down in 2012 in cities such as Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Dehradun, etc. Another 160 are struggling for survival, the paper adds.

Contrast

This is in stark contrast to the past, when MBA seats grew almost four-fold from 95,000 in 2006-07 to 3.6 lakh in 2011-12, resulting in a five-year compounded annual growth rate of 30 per cent. In the last five years, the number of B-schools in India has tripled to about 4,500.

But job opportunities for MBAs have not grown in the same proportion, as the MBA capacity in the country was built based on the projection of a 9 to 10 per cent economic growth rate, the ASSOCHAM paper says.

Similarly, the demand (and quality) of the Master of Computer Application (MCA) course is also on the decline. Nearly 95 colleges stopped offering the programme in 2012 and only 25 started MCA courses, the paper revealed.

Reasons

What are the reasons for the downward trend? “The biggest reason is the rapid mushrooming of tier-2 and tier-3 management education institutes that has unfortunately not been matched by commensurate uplift in the quality of management education. Most students prefer to choose cheaper AICTE-approved programmes rather than B-schools”, said D.S. Rawat, Secretary General, ASSOCHAM. He added that there is no quality control, the placements are not commensurate with the fees being charged, the faculty is not good enough and there is no infrastructure.

The paper on B-schools also showed how students expressed their displeasure about their schools promoting themselves by boasting about placements and high salaries, and also revealed that the students are also not concerned about the quality of education in an institute, they only want to know the placement and salary statistics and discounts offered on the fee structure.

Academics’ opinion

While the industry is pointing fingers at the colleges, the academics are holding the corporates responsible. Janardhanam K., Director, Canara Bank School of Management Studies, Bangalore University, spoke about the reluctance of the corporates to participate in academics.

“Also, the cost of recruitment is more for MBA graduates (selection, identification of resources, etc). The corporates have changed their preference for recruitment from PGs to UGs as they say there is better talent available in the UG market and the choices are more there, as nearly one lakh students graduate from UG management courses every year. In the case of MBA, there are fewer choices,” he explained.

Prof. Janardhanam also said, “There is also generalisation of the job market – any graduate is now okay for junior-level jobs. But for the middle and above middle levels, the expectations for MBAs are high.”

He said that at the Canara Bank School, in 2012-13, six government companies had approached for recruitments, which is a stable number.

*Disclaimer: The content above is a news article and is published in THE HINDU e-paper. Please follow here http://www.thehindu.com/education/college-and-university/the-charm-is-fading/article4372897.ece?ref=sliderNews